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Icy moon oceans are promising targets in the search for extraterrestrial life, but characterizing their internal dynamics remains challenging, as most oceanic processes are obscured from direct observation by the overlying ice shell. In contrast, the ice shell itself is relatively accessible to observation and may serve as a window into the ocean below. As the only liquid layer in the system, the subsurface ocean can actively transport heat and momentum, influencing the overlying ice shell in observable ways. Heat transport affects the freezing and melting rates at the ice-ocean interface, potentially leading to measurable variations in ice thickness. Momentum transport can induce non-synchronous rotation of the ice shell relative to the rocky interior. In this talk, I will review how convection, tides, and baroclinic eddies together control oceanic heat and momentum transport. Using Enceladus as an example, we then demonstrate how this understanding can be used to infer the ocean's equation of state and the partitioning of heat production among the ice shell, ocean, and core.

BIO

Wanying Kang joined the EAPS faculty in 2022. Kang holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University and an undergraduate degree in Physics from Peking University. In 2020, she was appointed as an EAPS Lorenz-Houghton Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow working with John Marshall and Sara Seager.

I use theories and numerical modeling to understand the geophysical fluid dynamics of the atmosphere and oceans on Earth and beyond, such as terrestrial exoplanets, disintegrating lava planets, and icy satellites like Saturn’s Enceladus and Titan. Applying tools developed for climate science on Earth to planetary science questions has the potential to give answers about what makes a planet habitable, and how biosignatures might be detected. Investigations into extreme worlds can even give us clues about ancient conditions on Earth and other planets—how they formed and how their climates evolved, and how Earth’s climate may continue to evolve. With next-generation instrumentation, there will soon be opportunities to make more detailed observations of exoplanets in the near future, and so one goal is to find potentially observable consequences through numerical simulations and collaborations with other groups in EAPS.

Host: Wei Zhu